The invention relates generally to welding and cutting systems and, more particularly, to systems and methods for detecting welding parameters in welding and cutting systems.
Welding and cutting processes have increasingly become utilized in various industries and applications. Welding and cutting processes may include, but are not limited to, processes such as: gas metal arc welding (GMAW), shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), flux cored arc welding (FCAW/FCAW-S), submerged arc welding (SAW), gas tungsten arc welding (TIG), carbon arc gouging (CAW), plasma arc welding (PAW), and plasma cutting. Such processes may be automated in certain contexts, although a large number of applications continue to exist for manual welding operations. In both cases, such operations rely on a variety of types of equipment to ensure the supply of consumables (e.g., wire feed, shielding gas, etc.) is provided to the operation in appropriate amounts at the desired time.
In various industries, it may be desirable to monitor selected welding or cutting parameters from welding or cutting applications. Such welding or cutting parameters may provide operators, supervisors, and/or managers with information that may be used to improve welding or cutting applications, to improve efficiency for future welding or cutting applications, and/or to train welding or cutting operators for improving welding or cutting quality. However, in certain welding or cutting systems, welding or cutting parameters may be used and/or transferred within the welding or cutting system but may be unavailable for monitoring and analysis by devices outside the welding or cutting system. For example, certain low cost welding systems may not include hardware and/or software configured to detect welding parameters produced during a welding application. Accordingly, there exists a need in the field for low cost devices that enable welding or cutting parameters produced in welding or cutting systems to be detected and to be available to devices outside the welding or cutting system.